Federal pandemic aid helped students catch up academically, but research shows gaps remain

It’s well known there were some big gaps in student learning tied to school shutdowns during the pandemic and difficult transitions with hybrid classes. But how much did federal aid help students recover from those academic losses? We now have some answers from new research. Jeffrey Brown reports.

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Amna Nawaz: It’s well-known that there were some big gaps in student learning tied to school shutdowns during the pandemic and difficult transitions with hybrid classes.

But a big question remains, how much did federal aid help students recover from those academic losses? We now have some answers from new research.

And Jeffrey Brown dives into the latest.

Jeffrey Brown: A pair of new studies show that the $190 billion the federal government gave in pandemic aid for schools helped students catch up academically. But big gaps remain.

Here to tell us about them is Laura Meckler, national education writer for The Washington Post.

Thanks for joining us, Laura.

So, in general terms, first, we did see some gains, even if moderate? Tell us about it.

Laura Meckler, The Washington Post: Yes, some — we did see some gains. There were deep losses from the pandemic between 2019 and 2022.

And we just saw those were across the board, rich districts, poor districts, but especially poor districts saw big, steep losses. But we did start to see some improvement between 2022 and spring of 2023. We don’t have the results from this last testing in spring 2024. So we don’t know. But, obviously, people are hoping that they will see continued improvement then.

But, as of what we know right now, kids are still behind.

Jeffrey Brown: So, that’s a lot of money to spend. What kind of specific steps made the most difference? Do we know?

Laura Meckler: Well, unfortunately, we don’t really know, because they wanted that money out the door, and there were very few strings attached.

Districts were not required to say how they were spending the money, and districts used it for a wide range of purposes. Now, let’s remember that, in the spring of 2021, when this money was first allocated, people were talking about reopening schools, and there was money spent on nurses. There was money spent on COVID testing, on ventilation systems.

Some school districts used money for facilities improvements. But then it became clear over — pretty quickly, it became clear that really the biggest problems American schools were facing was this loss of learning, this academic regression.

So there were — definitely money spent on that, on tutoring, on summer programs, on additional staff to help maybe put another teacher in the room to go around and help kids who are struggling with a problem.

Jeffrey Brown: Now, my understanding is that poorer districts got more of the aid. Did differences show up between poorer and better-off school systems?

Laura Meckler: Yes, they did.

And, even more interestingly enough, with — among poor districts, some poor districts got more money than others due to a quirk in the formula that they used in distributing this aid.

So researchers were able to really look and see, what impact did the aid have? Now, everybody improved, but was it that they were going to improve anyway, or do we credit this federal money? And what they were able to determine was that, for every $1,000 that was spent per people, they saw about 3 percent of a grade improvement.

So is that a lot or a little? I guess it depends on whether you’re feeling like this glass is 3 percent full or maybe 50 percent empty. But they did, in fact, have an impact.

Jeffrey Brown: And, to be clear, when you talk about grade improvement, we were talking about math or reading scores, that kind of thing?

Laura Meckler: Yes, so that’s in math scores.

If we’re looking at math in particular, what we found was that there was a drop in student test scores between 2019 and 2022 of about half-a-grade in math. So students lost about half-a-grade’s worth of learning in math. And so they needed to, like, catch up by quite a bit, and because you need to learn the new material for the next year that you’re in school, plus what you lost from the previous year.

So that was a huge challenge. And so, again, this — if you’re thinking about, say, a 50 percent loss, a half-a-grade, for every $1,000 spent, 3 percent improvement. So if you spent, say, $8,000 per student in this pandemic aid, you would get maybe a quarter-of-a-grade improvement.

Jeffrey Brown: Now, this federal funding is coming to an end soon, right? What happens then? What are you hearing from schools themselves?

Laura Meckler: Districts do have to spend the money by this fall. And there are a lot of concerns about cutbacks that will come with that.

Some districts are intent on trying to maintain as much of the new interventions that they put in place as possible. But, in other places, they are definitely facing cuts. For instance, in the city of Cleveland, they developed a robust summer program that served more than 5,000 kids a year for the last few years.

But, this summer, they only have about half that many enrolled, because they just don’t have funding for the full program.

Jeffrey Brown: So, just summing up as we end here, with all the talk about these gaps and the losses and studies like this, how much do we know at this point?

Laura Meckler: Well, you know, we know a good bit.

We know that the losses were steep. We know that the comeback is under way. But we just don’t know how far we have gotten yet. And it’ll be — one thing I will be looking for and a lot of people will be looking for is, what were those test scores this last spring, just a couple months ago? How much of an improvement did we see?

Did we see another big jump like we did from ’22 to 2023? Or did the pace of improvement lag? So I think that there’s still a bit that we don’t know. But we certainly know that the American education system has been trying, trying to make up for these deep losses.

And now that the money is gone, we will just have to see, will there be further sliding or will they find a way to continue helping kids catch up to where they’re supposed to be?

Jeffrey Brown: All right, Laura Meckler of The Washington Post, thank you very much.

Laura Meckler: Thanks so much for having me.